Full professor of Applied Linguistics at the Department of Applied Studies to Teaching and at the Graduate Program of Education from the University of Rio de Janeiro State (UERJ) and former full professor of Portuguese Language (L1) and Brazilian Literature at Federal School Brigadeiro Newton Braga (ret. 2015). Supervisor of master and doctoral students, in the fields of teachers education and theoretic / applied linguistics to literacy and reading. Laureate researcher by Carlos Chagas Filho Research Foundation of Rio de Janeiro State (FAPERJ).  PhD in Applied Linguistics (1994) and Master in Portuguese Language (1984) from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio),  besides graduate in Letters (1981) by UERJ and certified primary teacher (1977) by the Institute of Education of Rio de Janeiro  (ISERJ).

Throughout a singular career, built as a teacher in basic education, professor at the university and high level researcher, Senna always defeated the myth of not being possible to coexist the school teacher, the academic professor and the researcher.

Spite of his collection of about 260 published papers, among books, papers and lectures, as well as almost 100 supervisions of PHd, Ms. and Graduate monographs, Senna keeps an intense routine of investigations, constantly renewed in research cycles whose series can be accessed at the site of research group Language, Cognition and Educational Processes. Averse to random researches, his cycles of studies reflect the same focal object: theoretic basis for the teacher as an agent of literacy and reading at Brazilian public schools. Some moments more focused on linguistic issues, another more on knowledge representation, his contribution to the area of literacy and reading takes as primary objects the real subjects of Brazilian society and the circumstances that, frequently, determine their exclusion or school failure.

Current objects of investigation involve mostly the structural properties of semiotic systems – such as natural languages, written systems, sign languages as LIBRAS  and complex systems such as photograph – observed in in-use contexts featuring occurrences of representational interferences and metaphoric systems. With primary interest on Education, Senna seeks to evaluate the impact of social identity over literacy and written skills, under the phenomenon of “in contact cultures”, attested by the recurrent presence of perennial interferences in the use of written language by Brazilian Portuguese speakers and by Brazilian deep deaf competent users of LIBRAS.